When the game was almost at the end of the second half, the score was tie, 6-6. But Berkeley was sure of the day. She had forced her adversaries to their five-yard line, and there were only six minutes left to play. Stanford took a desperate brace and Berkeley lost the ball on downs. If only Stanford could gain ground now, or if time could be called. Nobody wanted a tie, to be sure, but defeat was hard to accept,—the first time, too.
Diemann of Stanford crouched on the side-lines with a heart of lead. The game was lost. What he had looked for, hoping against hope since play was called, had not happened. Ashley had played his usual hard, consistent game, straining every muscle, punting longer and higher than ever before, but missing stupidly some golden chances, the chances Blake would never have let slip by. Diemann had talked to him between halves, a few eager words, urging him to quickness, reminding him of Fred. The substitute had only shaken his head, and muttered that he was doing his best. Toward the end of the second he had shown the severity of the strain. Playing his hardest, with despair in his soul, it had told on him. In the last scrimmages his work had been very ragged. Indeed, the whole team seemed to have slumped, and the Berkeley line had hammered them down toward their own goal while precious seconds slipped by.
Now the men lined up rapidly. Stanford tried an end play. No gain. Diemann stood back of the team at one side of the goal; he was struggling hard to be calm, but he did a strange thing. He seized a small megaphone from the hands of an urchin beside him, and just as they lined up after Stanford's unsuccessful trial at end, he stepped to the white goal line and raising the funnel to his lips shouted in a voice audible to every man on both teams:
"Now, Fred Blake, play your game!"
Lyman heard and looked back, wondering.
Ashley heard. He stared at the grandstand with a bewildered, appealing face. Then the signal was given. It sent Ashley through tackle. The boy, feeling as though he had lost the game for his College where the other man would have won, went into the line with the energy of a forlorn hope. The Berkeley men gathered their superior force, and the Stanford team was lifted up and borne back, a gradually shifting mass, to its own goal line.
Were they over? The Berkeley crowd yelled, and an exultant sub threw his sweater in the air. No, the teams were up, and the ball was almost on the line, not quite. There remained a chance to punt it out of danger. Could Ashley do it quickly enough? He had been punting too slowly; the other line could surely get through and block his kick, and there were only two minutes to play.
Diemann, rigid with anxiety, saw that a Stanford man still lay on the ground. Straining his eyes through the dusk, a glance at the team told him that it was Ashley. The drawn muscles of the instructor's legs trembled, the blood beat in his temples. Was it coming, at the last moment?
As the trainer shot out from the side-lines with bucket and sponge, Diemann saw Ashley spring up, slap the grimy moleskins of the men nearest him, and get back into position to kick. Stanford was standing on her own goal line. He saw the ball snapped back; the fullback kicked it, in time; then, instead of the long, curving drive that was to save the day, he saw the ball rise almost straight in the air above the teams, and he groaned aloud as the Berkeley men broke through, and people with delirious laughter waved the blue and gold frantically about him.
The ball comes down among the struggling players. Suddenly, out of that jumble of men darts a red-sleeved figure, dashing through the scattered field, bounding like a stag toward the Berkeley goal.